The Dreamer Who Scatters Red Blood - 8
We had rooted out the Red Wave moles inside the Academy. A mid-level cadre we had completely overlooked—a real heavyweight—had turned himself in of his own free will. We fed false intelligence to the Red Wave’s carefully hidden leadership and lured them straight into a kill zone. Waiting inside that kill zone was the Mukgwangdae, blades already sharpened for the traitors.
It was perfect. Unless Enen somehow had a weakness the Red Wave could exploit, there was simply no way an operation this thoroughly prepared could fail.
Preparations complete.
Somehow the phrase “preparations complete” felt like an ominous flag, but that was nothing more than my own private anxiety.
“You caught them?”
- Yes. Thirteen captured including the leader, twenty-four killed. No escapees.
And that was why the whole affair ended without a single hitch.
What the hell is this.
I had just stretched out on the bed, ready to sleep, when the communication orb suddenly flared to life. Wondering what it could be, I answered—and it was the 4th Department Head.
Her report left me briefly speechless. The results were excellent, but the process of the suppression operation was bizarre beyond belief.
This time too…
This time too, I had done absolutely nothing. Not merely hanging back to direct from the rear—I genuinely hadn’t even known it was happening. I had been loafing around and only heard about it after the fact.
It was the pure salary-thief existence I had always dreamed of, yet living it felt strangely hollow. This went beyond free-riding; it felt like outright incompetence. How could traitors appear right under my nose without me noticing?
“I thought it was two days from now.”
I carefully opened my mouth, forcing down the complicated mix of chagrin and self-reproach. The Red Wave’s attack on the Academy was supposed to happen in two days. Robin had clearly said he would lure them for then, so it should have been certain.
Had I been wrong? Or had I been so completely at ease that two days had already slipped past without my noticing?
Even if that were the case, it would simply mean I was incompetent, and I could take responsibility and resign. The absolute worst possibility was that Robin was a triple agent who had deceived us as well.
- Still confirming, but it appears to have been the leadership’s unilateral decision.
“Ah.”
Those words let me breathe again. So they had simply charged in without even telling Robin.
Are they insane?
Forcing the operation without even coordinating with the field commander? That didn’t sound like ordinary intelligence at work.
Then again, anyone who rose to become leader of the Red Wave couldn’t possibly be normal to begin with.
“I’ll be right there. I need to see the details myself.”
- Yes, Director.
The communication cut off on the image of the 4th Department Head bowing her head.
I was still reeling. I had expected a quick finish with so many favorable factors stacked in our favor, but I never imagined it would end at light speed.
It felt exactly like filling the ultimate skill’s cooldown, doping myself with enhancement potions, stepping into the boss room—only for a dialogue event to pop up and end the fight. Convenient, yet utterly empty. What even was this?
“Hey.”
- …Hnn? Direectoorr?
I urgently called the 1st Department Head. He answered in a half-asleep daze, clearly having been dead to the world.
“We caught the Red Wave. You just need to go.”
Two sentences were more than enough to turn the 1st Department Head’s half-lidded eyes into full moons.
I dragged along Robin—who needed to confirm the faces of the leader and senior cadres—and the 2nd Department Head, who had been dozing in Gerhardt’s research lab, and headed for the forest. I didn’t bother asking why the man was still in the lab at this hour.
“Director.”
“Yeah. Good work.”
As we drew near the forest, a Mukgwangdae member on guard duty greeted us.
I clapped his shoulder a few times and walked past. The 1st Department Head beside me casually spoke up.
“They’re fine. Looks like it was a one-sided thrashing.”
“Yeah.”
The Mukgwangdae member we had just passed looked completely unscathed—uniform and expression both perfectly normal. They might have deliberately posted someone like that for guard duty, but if the fight had been hard or if there had been casualties, he never would have looked so peaceful.
Just as the 1st Department Head said, it seemed the Red Wave had been beaten senseless before they could even twitch. So why the hell had they crawled out two whole days early?
“Damn bastards. I was right in the middle of organizing materials because it was supposed to be two days later.”
I pretended not to hear the 2nd Department Head’s resentment-laden grumble. The man had practically turned into a full graduate student in the meantime.
The Red Wave had dug their own graves over and over, yet they had still managed to shatter one Department Head’s mental state. Maybe the 2nd Department Head and the Red Wave just had terrible compatibility.
“Director, over there.”
I followed the 1st Department Head’s pointing finger and saw the pile of corpses off to one side, along with the people forced to kneel in front of them.
Thirteen, just as the 4th Department Head had reported. Those were them.
“Ah, Director.”
“The Director is here. On your feet!”
Perhaps hearing the 1st Department Head’s voice, every Mukgwangdae gaze snapped toward us at once.
Even the ones who had been sitting and resting tried to stand, so I waved them back down. The reception was far too grand for a salary thief; it was embarrassing.
“Penelia!”
As I started walking toward the 4th Department Head, the 1st Department Head scurried over first.
“Wow, you caught a lot?”
Of course the delight was less about greeting a friend he saw every day and more about the joy of new toys.
“More died than expected. Is this many alright?”
“Plenty! As long as it’s not under five!”
At those words my eyes drifted toward the presumed Red Wave members. A number 2.6 times five. The 1st Department Head’s joy was also 2.6 times greater.
“Director.”
The 4th Department Head approached with the 1st Department Head still clinging to her and bowed her head. What were they, a yeti and Pepe? Sticking together like that.
Judging by the faint furrow between the 4th Department Head’s brows she seemed uncomfortable, yet she didn’t coldly shove him away because he was a friend. Kind-hearted, too.
“Good work. I should have helped.”
“Not at all. Thanks to the information you provided, Director, we were able to handle it smoothly.”
That only made me more embarrassed. In truth I never would have gotten that information if Robin hadn’t voluntarily surrendered.
I returned an awkward smile and turned my gaze to Robin, who had kept his mouth shut the entire time.
“Are those them?”
“Ah, yes. Correct.”
Robin’s expression as he answered looked extremely complicated. Guilt over selling out old comrades? No—nothing that soft and warm.
He’s wondering the same thing.
The look of “Why the hell are these bastards here?” These people should not have been here at this hour. I had clearly induced them to come two days later, so why now?
That was why his face had gone deathly pale the moment I told him the Red Wave had been captured. He had suddenly been placed in a position where he could be suspected of being a triple agent.
Honestly, I had even wondered whether the Red Wave had noticed Robin’s betrayal. Maybe they had aimed for the gap in our defenses and, while they were at it, hoped we would kill Robin ourselves—but
“──!”
Looking at the Red Wave members thrashing with gags still in their mouths, that didn’t seem to be the case. These idiots had charged in without knowing a thing.
…Which made it even weirder. They did this without even realizing there was a traitor among them?
What the hell are these people, really.
No matter how impossible traitors were to understand with a normal person’s mindset, this was going too far.
“──! ──!!”
“Ungag him.”
“Yes.”
At the 4th Department Head’s reply a nearby Mukgwangdae member ran over and yanked the gag from one man’s mouth.
“Ro─!”
- Thwack!
The Red Wave member who had been about to shout something had his words forcibly canceled by the Mukgwangdae member’s flying fist the instant the gag came off.
As expected of the Mukgwangdae. Their instincts were sharp even for the smallest things—I loved it. Even little moments like this lifted the spirits of a work-worn Director.
“Who’s the leader?”
“The one who just got punched.”
Robin’s answer improved my mood even further. Perfect.
When I nodded with satisfaction, the Mukgwangdae member began removing the gags from the remaining Red Wave members as well. Having just watched someone get smacked the moment he opened his mouth, they stayed completely quiet this time.
I sat on a tree stump and watched the Director thoroughly roast the Red Wave.
“Would it be alright if you don’t join them, 2nd Department Head?”
While I was blankly watching the scene, one of the Mukgwangdae members offered me a water flask. Perfect timing—I was thirsty.
“What would I even do squeezed in there? That’s the 1st Department Head’s job.”
I took the flask and answered. I was the type who moved before things exploded. After they exploded, it became the 1st Department Head’s responsibility.
As for the 4th Department Head, well—she was the type who stuck to the Director’s side and never left it.
“They were going to die anyway, so they crawled in early just to die faster.”
“Apparently they moved early because they were worried about information leaking.”
The Mukgwangdae member answered my muttered words of pure disbelief.
It was a fairly persuasive explanation. For truly critical operations they sometimes prepared separate official and unofficial documents, or informed only the absolute minimum number of responsible parties of the real mission.
But even that had limits. This was an operation that required the field commander to coordinate from the inside—what was the point of keeping the field commander himself in the dark?
Half-baked idiots.
That was the feeling I always got dealing with the Red Wave. They seemed to be thinking and they seemed to have their own convictions, yet something always went wrong at the decisive moment.
Then again, that was probably why people like them chased these delusions instead of trying to succeed through legitimate means.
Morons.
I was red-blooded myself. The only reason I, a red-blood, had been absorbed into blue-blood society was because my father received a title—and that happened after I was born.
Having personally witnessed that red-bloods could succeed just fine, I could never look kindly on the Red Wave. If anything, I worried that those bastards would only make the Empire crack down harder on red-bloods.
“More than I expect—”
“You son of a bitch!”
- Crack!
“—died…?”
I had been comparing the number of prisoners to the number of corpses when a furious shout rang out, followed by the sound of something bursting.
What?
The Director had swung his fist at the prisoner right in front of him. The prisoner’s head vanished, leaving him a headless stump of a man. Both the 1st and 4th Department Heads had gone rigid as stone.
“During the Third Glory suppression the Director was talking about the North. He even mentioned the Six Swords.”
In that instant the words the 1st Department Head had spoken after the Third Glory suppression came flooding back.
No way. Right?
It couldn’t be. Please don’t let it be that.
I started a rough preliminary interrogation, but the Red Wave showed no intention of talking.
More precisely, their mouths opened just fine—they simply refused to spit out any information of actual value. Useless bastards.
Should I just kill them all?
Both the leader and the senior cadres were all right here. Simply wiping them out would be enough to collapse the Red Wave’s cell-based organization.
Even so, arbitrarily executing prisoners who had already been captured—rather than killing them in the middle of an operation—was problematic. Once you took them alive, the Empire’s principle was to squeeze every last drop of use out of them.
Last time the 4th Department Head had killed that corpse-handling captain it had already been a headache to smooth over. I couldn’t afford a repeat performance.
“You too must be dissatisfied with the current system.”
While I was thinking that, the leader of the Red Wave—too much of a bother to keep calling him that, so just the ringleader—spoke up.
Dissatisfied? Well, I was dissatisfied with the way civil servants got worked like dogs, that much was true.
“I know the truth. You too are a comrade who can stand with us.”
“What kind of bullshit is that?”
The nonsense made my face twist. I hadn’t taken a bullet to the brain; why the hell would I side with the likes of them?
At my reaction the ringleader let out a laugh and opened his mouth again.
“You have already achieved far greater deeds than we have. Who in this world would dare harm the one who succeeded the purple crown?”
For a moment I failed to understand what he meant. More accurately, I refused to understand.
The purple crown. A being higher even than the blue blood that denoted nobility—in other words, a term for the imperial and royal families.
“I heard it from Robin. During the confrontation match, right in front of everyone, you—”
“You son of a bitch!”
By the time my mind caught up, my fist had already swung.
Fuck. This bastard just had to dredge up my black history out of nowhere.